Tre Quarti: The Old Goat Of New Orleans by valeri at Inkitt

Chapter 1

TRE QUARTI’S OLD GOAT

Chapter One: The Bug Man Comes Through

Zodiac: AriesTarot: The TowerNorse Rune: ThurisazPendulum: CounterclockwiseOpening Scripture: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about.”1 Peter 5:8

New Orleans did not meet the Old Goat politely.

The city met him in heat.

It met him in stairwells that smelled like damp concrete, sour mop water, fried food, roach spray, and old anger. It met him in courtyards where women leaned over railings with cigarettes in their hands and children ran barefoot through patches of busted grass like they had been born knowing which men to avoid and which trucks meant candy.

His truck was one of the trucks they ran toward.

Not because he was sweet.

Not because he was safe.

Because he was the Bug Man.

In 1969, that meant something.

The projects knew his truck before they knew his mood. They knew the rattle of the pesticide tanks in the back. They knew the sharp chemical smell that followed him up the walkways before he even knocked. They knew his work boots, his goatee, his hard mouth, and the way he carried himself like the whole world had already tried him and lost interest in surviving the argument.

The children called him the Old Goat.

Some said it started because of the goatee. Some said one of the kids tugged it once, sticky fingers wrapped around those coarse hairs, and instead of knocking the child away, he bent down and went, “Baaahhh,” low and ugly, like a goat trapped in a barrel.

The kids screamed laughing.

After that, the name stuck.

Old Goat.

Bug Man.

Same man.

Same truck.

Same poison.

He kept lollipops in the truck. Not fancy candy. Not anything wrapped in gold or meant to impress. Just little sweets, the kind that stuck to children’s palms and turned their tongues red, purple, orange, blue. When he pulled up, they came running.

“Bug Man!”

“Old Goat!”

“Give me one!”

He would grumble like he hated it, then hand them out anyway.

That was the version the projects knew.

The man with poison in the tank and candy in his pocket.

The only white man some of those children had ever come close enough to touch without fear or distance between them. They touched his daughter’s arm sometimes when she rode with him, not mean, not mocking, just curious. Back then, plenty of children in those buildings did not travel far. The project was school, church, courtyard, corner store, hallway, grandmother, uncle, neighbor, danger, shelter, whole world.

So when the Old Goat came through, he stuck out.

White man. Work truck. Pesticide tanks. Daughter beside him. Candy in the cab.

He was not allowed in because he was loved.

He was allowed in because everybody knew why he came.

He came to kill the bugs.

That was his passport.

Not money.

Not family name.

Not mafia power.

Roaches.

Rats.

Bedbugs.

Water bugs fat as thumbs.

The kind of infestations that made mothers slap the wall in the middle of cooking and keep babies’ bottles wrapped in towels. The kind that came out when the lights went low. The kind that made a home feel invaded even when the door was locked.

The Old Goat came with the poison.

And people opened doors.

That was what made him useful.

The mafia did not love him either.

They noticed him.

There is a difference.

Men like that notice access before they notice character. They notice who can go where. Who gets waved through. Who hears things without being asked. Who sees inside apartments, hallways, kitchens, bedrooms, back stairwells, maintenance closets, and courtyards where their own polished shoes would get them watched before they reached the second floor.

The Old Goat could walk in carrying a tank.

Nobody had to ask why.

A man with a gun was a problem.

A man with a pesticide sprayer was work.

So they started asking for favors.

Small ones at first.

A door number.

A name.

Whether somebody was home.

Whether a certain woman had company.

Whether a boy had new shoes.

Whether a hallway light was out.

Whether a man who claimed to be broke had a new radio sitting in the kitchen.

The Old Goat listened without looking like he listened.

He saw without acting like he cared.

And sometimes, when the request was not regular work, somebody would ask about the special batch.

Nobody said what made it special.

Nobody wrote it down.

Nobody asked twice.

The Old Goat mixed what he mixed.

The families paid what they paid.

And rooms stayed quiet after he left.

But that is the city story.

The family story had no lollipops in it.

At home, the Old Goat was not folklore. He was not a funny man with a goatee. He was not the neighborhood Bug Man making children laugh in the courtyard.

At home, he was an abusive alcoholic.

A mean man.

A violent husband.

A father who beat the hell out of his wife and children and left memories nobody wanted to claim out loud.

Some families pass down recipes.

Some pass down land.

Some pass down silverware wrapped in cloth and stories about saints.

His family passed down silence.

Silence about what happened when the truck came home.

Silence about who got hit worse.

Silence about who hid.

Silence about who was the favorite and whether being the favorite meant safety or only less damage.

Val’s mother was his favorite.

That was what people said.

Maybe he did not beat her as bad.

Maybe he trusted her more.

Maybe he saw something in her that looked useful.

Maybe she learned early that being close to the dangerous man was sometimes safer than being far from him.

Nobody could say for sure.

That is the cruelty of family memory. It comes broken. It comes with missing teeth. It comes in half-sentences and shut doors.

But in 1969, she rode with him.

His daughter.

His favorite.

The one who watched the city through the passenger window while the Old Goat drove from one housing project to another with the tanks shifting behind them.

New Orleans was changing that year.

Downtown was being cleared for the Superdome, whole blocks marked for erasure so the city could build a future big enough to impress outsiders. Canal Street still shined with department-store windows and old Southern pride, but the old streetcars had disappeared from most lines, replaced by buses that coughed diesel into the heat.

The Rivergate stood at the foot of Canal like something from another world, smooth and modern, promising conventions, money, visitors, progress.

In the French Quarter, hippies and artists gathered around Jackson Square. Bourbon Street was changing too, turning louder, brighter, cheaper in places, neon crawling over old sin. Preservation Hall still held music like a candle in a dark room, but outside, the city was filling with runaways, anti-war talk, tourists, hustlers, cops, tarot readers, drunks, and men who could smell opportunity before it had a name.

The Saints were still new.

The city was still deciding what kind of beast it wanted to become.

And the projects were still full of families.

That matters.

They were not ruins yet.

They were not just crime stories.

They were brick, laundry lines, radios, card games, babies, school clothes, mothers yelling from upstairs, men coming home tired, boys trying to look older than they were, girls learning which stairwell to avoid, grandmothers watching everything.

They were communities.

They were also neglected.

The cracks had started.

Bad plumbing. Bad wiring. Cheap repairs. Federal money drying up. City officials talking big and fixing little. Heat pressing down on buildings not designed for mercy.

That was where the Old Goat worked.

Inside the pressure.

Inside the rot before the rot got famous.

He did not rule those places. That lie would insult everybody who lived there.

He was just one of the few outsiders the projects let walk through.

Because he came to kill the bugs.

That was enough.

On a hot morning, the truck pulled up in front of one of the brick developments, tires crunching over grit and broken glass. The Old Goat cut the engine and sat there for a second with both hands on the wheel.

His daughter knew better than to talk too fast.

She watched his mood the way other children watched weather.

A shift in the jaw.

A breath through the nose.

A finger tapping once against the steering wheel.

Those were signs.

Every child of a violent house learns signs.

The city could call him funny. The kids could call him Old Goat. The mafia could call him useful. But his daughter knew the air around him could change without warning.

He reached into the paper sack between them and pulled out a fistful of lollipops.

“Take those,” he said.

She took them.

His voice was not soft, but it was not sharp yet.

That mattered.

Outside, the first children spotted the truck.

“Bug Man!”

They came running.

He opened the door and stepped down heavy.

The children crowded, but not too close at first. They knew his rhythm too. Everybody did. Let him get his feet on the ground. Let him reach back into the cab. Let him decide if he was in the mood to be bothered.

One little boy, braver than the rest or just younger, grabbed at his goatee.

The Old Goat bent down, eyes hard for half a second.

His daughter froze.

Then he opened his mouth.

“Baaahhh.”

The children exploded.

Laughter bounced off brick walls and metal railings.

The little boy jumped back, delighted.

“Old Goat! Do it again!”

He grunted and waved them off, but he handed out candy.

His daughter watched their hands.

Small hands.

Brown hands.

Sticky hands.

Hands reaching for sweetness from a man who carried poison.

That was New Orleans too.

Contradiction walking around in work boots.

A woman leaned out from upstairs and called, “You coming up here today? Them roaches done got bold.”

“I’m coming,” he shouted.

Another woman opened a screen door before he knocked.

“Spray under the sink good this time.”

He lifted the tank.

“That’s what I’m here for.”

And he was.

Mostly.

Behind him, across the courtyard, a man in a short-sleeve shirt stood under the shade and pretended to smoke. He did not look like he lived there. He looked too still. Too clean. His shoes were wrong for the courtyard.

The Old Goat saw him.

Did not nod.

Did not speak.

Just adjusted the hose and moved toward the building.

His daughter saw the man too.

She had already learned that adults could talk without moving their mouths.

Inside, the hallway smelled wet and closed-in. Somebody had cooked onions that morning. Somebody else had burned toast. A baby cried behind one door. A radio played low behind another.

The Old Goat knocked on the first apartment.

“Bug man.”

Locks shifted.

A woman let him in.

He sprayed under the sink, behind the stove, along the baseboards, around the pipe holes where roaches came in like they paid rent. His daughter stood near the door holding the candy sack, watching the woman’s children stare at her skin.

One little girl stepped close and touched her wrist.

The daughter did not move.

The little girl rubbed once, as if checking whether the color changed.

The mother snapped, embarrassed. “Don’t do that.”

The Old Goat did not turn around.

His daughter looked at the little girl and said nothing.

There was nothing to say. Not in a city that kept people separated and then acted surprised when curiosity reached out with a child’s hand.

The Old Goat finished spraying.

The woman paid him.

Not much.

Enough.

Then she lowered her voice.

“Man came asking for Ray.”

The Old Goat wiped the sprayer nozzle with a rag.

“What man?”

“Don’t know.”

“You know.”

The woman looked toward the children.

The Old Goat did not soften.

She gave him a name.

He nodded once.

That was all.

Outside, the man with the wrong shoes had disappeared.

By noon, the Old Goat had sprayed six apartments, handed out nearly all the lollipops, cursed at a busted pipe, and told one boy to stop throwing rocks before he lost the hand God gave him.

By afternoon, he had collected three names, one apartment number, and a rumor about a package hidden behind a loose wall panel in a laundry room.

By evening, he would drink.

By night, somebody in his house would listen for footsteps and try to guess which version of him came through the door.

That is the part people leave out when they turn hard men into legends.

They talk about the truck.

They talk about the candy.

They talk about the time he got smarted off to and beat a man in broad daylight.

They talk about how cops did not rush to handle him.

They talk about how the projects let him in.

They talk about the special batch.

They talk about the mafia.

They do not talk about the wife.

They do not talk about the children.

They do not talk about the fear that sits at a dinner table like another plate.

But Tre Quarti remembers what people try to bury.

That is the whole curse of it.

Before Valeri had a name, before Caronna laid claim, before Bellucci ever had eyes on her, before anyone called her Empress, before publishing became a weapon and tarot became a language, there was already a map being drawn.

Not on paper.

In hallways.

In bruises.

In truck routes.

In candy wrappers stuck to project sidewalks.

In poison tanks.

In prayers whispered by women who still had to cook after being hurt.

In children who learned to laugh when the dangerous man made goat sounds because laughter was safer than silence.

The Old Goat was not the beginning of glory.

He was the beginning of inheritance.

And in New Orleans, inheritance does not always come wrapped in lace.

Sometimes it comes smelling like pesticide.